My name is Matthew and this is my blog. It's a personal blog and isn't affiliated with any of the companies I work for or have worked for in the past. Just to get that out of the way.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

My Goat Likes To Travel

("Growing Up" by the same bloke as the lyric on Monday)

Well, things are happening with the group work now. We will hopefully have managed to borrow two of the pieces of equipment we need for our location surround-sound recordings - an audio interface that will let us record from 8 microphones at once (all we need is 5 but no one makes them at the moment) and... possibly... a Soundfield microphone. My joy at getting to use a microphone worth several thousand pounds that can make mono, stereo or surround sound recordings is tempered by the fact that at the moment we have no way to encode the recordings we make on the Soundfield into surround sound; but one step at a time. We plan to test the laptop, posh audio interface and big hard disc idea for location recording next weekend to record a choir in a church. One of my friends at university does a lot of work at his church with his wife who has arranged the Calypso Carol for a choir and band. Hopefully by the time we come to do the choir, the band recordings will be mostly finished. Anyway, it should be fun, and we’ve heard tell that this recording may be played on a local BBC radio station over Christmas. Of course, if it all goes wrong then we suddenly have to find another way to make location recordings in surround sound (which we can afford). And even if it is played on the local radio, I’ll have to listen online from Scotland. Anyway, on to non-techie stuff.

A couple of people asked about my flatmates whom I mentioned a couple of days ago. More about them briefly: we met in our first year at university when we were put together by Unipol who manage most of the student housing in Leeds. During the second year Malek and I shared a flat again (with 3 other people) whilst Karla was on a work placement in Japan and then London, then whilst Karla did her second year, Malek was on placement at MSN in London and I was working down near Bath. So this is the first time we have been living in the same city since we were first years and it's going pretty well. Karla is unfortunately down with tonsillitis at the moment so Malek and I are doing that thing where you try to be caring and attentive without actually getting too close. Having said that, there is a certain appeal in the idea of a doctor giving us a note that would allow us to hand our work in late. I jest of course (mostly) but if either I don't post for a few days, or I make several posts a day then it's a fairly good bet that I've picked it up too. I honestly hope we don't all get it, who would make the soup and bring us ice cream?

Today I have been mostly listening to reggae. People who know me might be surprised to hear that I own any, but I do. It reminds me of the technical support area at the studio I worked at on placement where they would play some quite obscure reggae almost all the time making quite hard to stay stressed for too long. Sometimes they would break out in The Clash or something, if you heard that you knew that it was probably a bad idea to bring them more problems. Anyway, I've got about six hours of reggae which was a surprise to me when all I have is a three disc Trojan box set, a two CD compilation and a reggae re-imagining of a very famous prog rock album. Tomorrow I think I will temper this craziness with Belle & Sebastian, then possibly The Divine Comedy followed by Lemon Jelly for dessert (I don't have classes on Thursdays so it will be a books plus ringtone day).

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

"Belle & Sebastian, then possibly The Divine Comedy followed by Lemon Jelly"My God! I was listening to nearly exactly the same thing! Anyone would think we're related. Swap Belle & Sebastian for Rootjoose though.